Open Access: The People’s Petition

Earlier
this month a group of Open Access (OA) advocates flew to Washington to attend a meeting with the US Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). Their objective was to convince OSTP that it is
vital the US government ensures that all publicly-funded research is made freely
available on the Internet.

Moreover,
in February the OA movement had defeated a piece of
publisher-backed legislation called the Research Works Act (RWA) that, if it had
passed, would have slain the poster child of the OA movement — the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy. This policy requires
that all NIH-funded papers are made freely available on the Web within 12
months of publication.

The same month a piece of bipartisan legislation — the Federal Research Public
Access Act (FRPAA)
— had been introduced in both US houses that would have the reverse effect of
the RWA. If passed, it would propagate the NIH policy to a dozen or so other US federal
agencies, and reduce the current NIH embargo from 12 months to six.

Yes,
the omens were good. To cap it all, says John Wilbanks, a senior
fellow in entrepreneurship at the Ewing
Kauffman Foundation, and one of the group that travelled to Washington, the
meeting appeared to go well. “They listened to us, they clearly had studied the
issues.”

Nagging feeling

Flying home to the West Coast on a redeye, however, Wilbanks
began to experience a nagging feeling that their job was not complete. After
all, he thought, the OSTP had made no promises; and it would inevitably be
talking to publishers as well. And publishers tell a very different story about OA.

That
something else became an initiative called Access2Research. The objective was to engage
the public in the discussions about OA. As Wilbanks wrote on his blog,
“The only thing missing from the open access debate is the public.”

The
best way of engaging the people, it was decided, was to launch a petition on the “We the People” site — which
was introduced on whitehouse.gov by the US
government last September — and invite the public to sign it.

The
petition — which went live on the night of 20th May — reads: “Requiring
the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet
in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and
caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other
taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research
process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.”

It ends by urging President Obama “to act now to implement open access
policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.”

In
order to receive a response from the US government the petition must attract 25,000
signatures within 30 days (i.e. 19th June). But here too the omens
are good: within the first two and a half days the petition had attracted half the number
of signatures necessary, with roughly 200 being added every hour.

At
the time of writing the number stands at 16,443,
two thirds of the way there, yet with 24 days still to run.

Long-standing tradition

In
fact, calling on people to make a public statement in support of OA is a
long-standing tradition within the movement, and has met with varying degrees
of success.

In
2001, for instance, the Budapest Open Access Initiative attracted over
5,600
signatures
in support of the concept of “free and unrestricted online availability” to
research articles. The BOAI was undoubtedly successful, although its success was
not a product of the number of people who signed the initiative, but the fact that it marked the birth of the OA movement, and articulated the two-pronged strategy
(Green and Gold OA) that has enabled
the movement to progress thus far.

The
previous year (2000) an initiative called the Public Library of Science (PLoS) had garnered
34,000 signatures in support of OA. Scientists signing the PLoS Open Letter called
for “an online public library that would provide the full contents of the
published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life
sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form.”

Those
signing also pledged to “publish in, edit or review for, and personally
subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to
grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research
reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public
resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date.”

While the initiative later led to the creation of OA publisher PLoS, most of those who signed the open letter subsequently
reneged on their promise, and carried on as before. As such, the petition
cannot be counted a success.

Back with a vengeance

Collecting
signatures in support of OA came back with a vengeance earlier this year, when
researchers were asked to boycott Elsevier for its support of the RWA by
signing a pledge at the Cost of Knowledge
site. Those signing committed to no longer submit to or edit/review for
Elsevier journals “unless they radically change how they operate”.

It
is too early to say whether the Cost of Knowledge signatories are likely to
stand by their pledge, but the initiative has undoubtedly been a success, since
it was instrumental in Elsevier’s decision to withdraw its support for the RWA.
Meanwhile, the number of scientists signing up has continued to grow, and
currently stands at 11,857.

Other
petitions have fared less well. A January petition
against the RWA,
for instance, failed to reach its target 10,000 signatures. A similar
petition
launched on the We the People site the same month likewise failed to meet the
signature threshold.

However, the petition most similar to Access2Research was one organised in 2007 that called on the
European Commission to, “guarantee public access to publicly-funded research
results shortly after publication.” This collected 18,500 signatures in three
weeks (although subsequently the number grew to 28,000), and both startled and
impressed European politicians.

“The
EU petition was very influential, and helped to persuade the Commission to mandate
OA for EU-funded research,” explains Alma Swan, director of European advocacy
programmes at SPARC, who project managed the petition. “In other
words, it ensured they took the matter seriously and gave them confidence to
proceed.”

It
doubtless helped that the petition was sponsored by a number of well-regarded European
organisations, including the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), SURF, Danmarks Elektroniske
Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek (DEFF), Deutsches
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and SPARC Europe.

“The
White House petition is like the EU petition, agrees Stevan Harnad, a cognitive
scientist at Université du Québec à Montréal. “It
is citizens asking their government to mandate OA, unlike the PLoS (and
Elsevier) boycott threats, which are aimed at publishers, or the BOAI or the Berlin Declaration,
which are just statements of support for the principle of OA.”

More successful?

But
will the Access2Research petition manage to steel the resolve of US
lawmakers in the way the 2007 petition emboldened European politicians to act,
particularly as publishers step
up their lobbying against OA?

Peter
Suber, OA advocate and faculty fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, believes it might.
Indeed, he thinks it could prove even more successful than earlier petitions —
for four reasons.

“First,
there is superb coordination behind it. Many of us were prepared on Day One to
publicise it.

“Second,
there is the lack of cost for the signatories. The petition doesn't ask people
to change their practices for publishing, editing, or refereeing. It merely
asks them to approve an idea and call for action.

“Third,”
adds Suber, “there is the specific goal. Getting 25k signatures in 30 days is
an identifiable target. It's not just "more and more and more". We
can tell when we we're closing in, and we can tell how quickly we're closing
in.

“Finally,”
Suber says, “there’s the payoff. Getting 25k signatures in 30 days triggers an
official response from the Obama administration. That matters in itself. In
addition, this administration has twice solicited public comments on federal OA
policy. It may not take much to elicit a major public statement or policy
initiative.”

More effective strategy

What
may also help is that the OA movement has learned that calling for “public
access” to publicly-funded research can be a more effective strategy than demanding
“open access” for researchers — and that is precisely what the
current petition majors on.

Explains
Harnad, “Public pressure on governments to mandate OA based on the slogan of
public access to publicly funded research has been very successful; the slogan
is appealing to both voters and politicians. The EU petition was instrumental
in inducing the EU to mandate OA for EU-funded research. It is likely that the
White House petition will have a similar effect on US-funded research.”

Swan also believes the omens are good. “This time, it’s the confidence that the
message is coming from ‘we, the people’ that matters,” she says. However, she
adds, timing will be crucial. “Let’s hope the US government acts, before the
electioneering kicks in and brings everything to a halt.”

But
whatever the outcome of the current petition, OA advocates are confident that it is only a matter of time. In an online environment, they maintain, OA is both inevitable and optimal.
Nevertheless, it is clearly frustrating for them that there appears to be no
straight path to OA, and sometimes it is a case of one
step forward, two steps back.

As
Wilbanks puts it, “It takes time to change a hidebound industry. There's a lot
of money to be made in selling scholarly journals, and a long history of
resistance to change. I think the movement's gone pretty quickly actually
viewed in that light.”

Those
wishing to sign the petition can do so here. It is not
necessary to be a US citizen to do so.

For
further background, SPARC has produced a video explaining the case
for public access. As noted earlier, the deadline for signing is June 19th.

Below
I publish a short Q&A with John Wilbanks.

Q&A with John Wilbanks.

Photo by Joi Ito

RP: There have been a number of petitions in
support of Open Access in the past few years. What is new and different about
the one you started on May 20th?

Second,
I think what's new is that we realised the debate had hit a ceiling. We can
argue for the NIH policy, we can argue against RWA. But we have to
fundamentally change the dynamic of the debate, and you can do that by going
straight to the people in an organised way. I'm not sure that's been done
before in OA. Most of our declarations are inside baseball.

Third,
we used the wethepeople
platform.
Carl Malamud was the first one that I know
of who used it in the open space, and his petition showed how hard it is to get
25,000 signatures. But it has the potential to really open the debate up that
we needed. We don't know what it will do, but it can't hurt to have a strong
public vote in favour of OA.

RP: This is
very much a call for the public (rather than the research community) to support
Open Access. Why should the public care?
What is in it for them? What, in a nutshell, is your message to ordinary
citizens?

JW: I think we
get at that in the petition itself. It's taxpayer funded research, taxpayers
should all have the right to access it. Public funds should create public
goods.

RP: You
need to get 25,000 signatures within 30 days. What does that win if you
succeed: a response from the White House, a debate in Congress, new
legislation, or something else?

JW: We don't
know. At the least we get a response. Hopefully we get a policy change, a
conversation about implementing the request in the petition. Once we hit our
number we need to turn up the pressure on the Administration to make a
meaningful response.

It’s just tough

RP: I read that you came
up with the idea of the petition after meeting the Science Advisor to President
Obama John Holdren. What was
that meeting, and what happened in it that led you to conclude that a petition
was needed?

JW: Four of us —
Mike Carroll, Heather Joseph, Mike Rossner, and me — met with the OSTP staff
earlier in May. It was a very nice meeting. They listened to us, they clearly
had studied the issues. But they can't make any promises. And it's tough,
because you know the publishers have fulltime staff devoted to these meetings
and we can pull off one every now and then. It's just tough.

RP: The
petition is for "free access over the Internet to scientific journal
articles arising from taxpayer-funded research". Producing scientific
journal articles is not a cost-free process is it? Are you asking the public to
find additional money to meet the costs of providing free access, or is the
money already in the system somewhere but needing to be re-allocated?

JW: This petition
asks for a policy implementation of public access across the US Government —
focused on access more than mechanisms. But in the NIH case and elsewhere, one
method is to include the cost of publication in the funding itself. When you're
looking at grants in science research they're tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars. A line item of $2,000 for an article fee isn't a significant hurdle.

RP: In 2001
a group of Open Access advocates called for the “free and
unrestricted online availability" of journal articles. Why, eleven years later,
are you having to make the same call? If what you are asking for were logical,
feasible and cost-effective surely it would have happened by now?

JW: Because
change takes a long time. And academic publishing is protected from some of the
winds that have buffeted other content industries — the costs are hidden to the
scientists at elite universities, and the desire to publish in the top journals
is strong. But scientists are getting used to having the content they want in
their personal life, and the gulf with how their professional content is
managed is only growing.

On
top of that, citizens are getting more and more likely to bump into paywalls
and get frustrated. Entrepreneurs are unable to try and disrupt scholarly
search and publishing. And we're all more densely networked than we were ten
years ago. The screwed-upness of the system is getting harder and harder to
hide. And the success of PLoS, BioMed Central, Hindawi, and other open publishers is
showing that there's money to be made in different access models.

It
takes time to change a hidebound industry. There's a lot of money to be made in
selling scholarly journals, and a long history of resistance to change. I think
the movement's gone pretty quickly actually viewed in that light.

RP: What
would be the best outcome of the petition in your view?

JW: The extension
of the NIH policy across all US federal agencies. Even better would be a
shorter embargo period.

2 comments:

Sandy Thatcher
said...

Of course, all the heated debate could have been avoided, and the goal of public access achieved quickly, if the mandate had simply been to require posting by government agencies of final reports of research funded by those agencies, rather than the journal articles that are later written and published by the private sector. Why the OA movement decided to go after journal articles instead of research reports remains a mystery--unless it was in the hope that pressure could be brought to bear on publishers to lower their subscription prices to libraries.

I'm sorry to bump this six month old thread, but I felt the need to reply to this argument (i.e. open access to research reports, not the papers) that tenets of the current paywall model seem to favour.

I addressed this issue in a post on a related blog at The Scholarly Kitchen, and here I summarize some key points of that exchange.

I consider the writing process (including the peer-review) to be research at its best, and an integral part of the research process.

Two important points: a) Peer review, usually done on a voluntary basis (you must read "for free", or at least "not paid by the journals") by---yes---peers. And 2) publication costs are, in many cases, paid for by the granting institutions.

The funding agencies sensu latu (be them public or private) pay not only for data, but for the whole process of research. It is such a well established situation, that some funding agencies clearly and specifically target part of the grant to be used for writing (including contracting professional copy-editing services, but often is mainly for translations) and publishing the said research.

Let this point be clear: when the granting office is a government fund, the public (i.e. the taxpayer) pays the research work AND the publication in specialized journals.

Research papers are more than a summary of the researchers' work. It is a map through intricate knowledge networks that the authors used to build their work, interpret the results and link them to the rest of the vast web of research.

The purpose of journal articles is not only to document the results obtained, but to disseminate the knowledge to a larger audience, and to help in the building of the commons of human knowledge.

Research reports, on the other hand, do not have the proverbial “layman” in mind. These documents are not written to disseminate knowledge, but to document it. Thus IMHO, limiting open access to these reports alone would accomplish disclosure, not openness.

In other words, it would be the equivalent of giving someone a complex gadget in detached pieces without the assembly instructions.

A few general considerations:

1/ Knowledge (not journal articles) should be freely accessible. It is upon free exchange of knowledge and ideas that science is ultimately built.

2/ Publicly funded *research*, and not only the results, ultimately belongs to the public.

3/ Publishers have a right to sell their product. Its the product that needs redefining, and some beefing up.

There is an ongoing shift in scholar publications' business-model. However, as the OP clearly states, this change is not a product of this particular USA mandate or OA advocacy. It is a product of the internet, and its inexorable transforming force remodelling the way by which we obtain information, communicate and relate to each other.

In the internet epoch, wide and instantaneous distribution is already achieved. Diffusion is not enough a selling argument for scholar journals any more.

Citations of papers are a direct and well established method by which scientists recognize the relevance of each others work, and are the ultimate currency in scholarly publications: they give journals their impact factor, they give authors their h-rank.

An increasing body of evidence suggests that readily accessible information significantly increases the chances of any given research to be cited (know as the Open Access Citation Advantage – OACA). This trend, if confirmed, will bring many more authors towards journals with OA policies.

Ultimately we must keep in mind that knowledge not shared ultimately withers and dies.